his personal honour.  Just how all this comes about I leave you to discover by The Light above the Cross Roads (DUCKWORTH).  It is a powerful and highly original story that has the distinction of breaking entirely new ground in war-novels.  The scenes of it, laid partly in Ireland, partly in Berlin, or behind the German lines, are themselves guarantees of the unusual.  One slight criticism that I have to make rises from the question whether so expert an “agent” as Marcus would really employ blot-producing ink for his map tracery when, on his own confession, he might have used pencil.  But if the blots had not been there the Prussians (oddly obtuse as to the real meaning of Marcus’s presence amongst them) would never have arrested Ursule, and thus provided a dramatic and unhackneyed situation.  There is a gravity and distinction, moreover, about the tale that somehow reminds me of the late Monsignor BENSON.  It is undoubtedly a story that should be read.

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I am rather puzzled what to say about the The Grey Shepherd (HODDER AND STOUGHTON), because it is essentially a story that will appeal very differently to readers of different temperaments.  Some people will say, “How beautiful!” Others perhaps, “How precious!” and both with a certain truth.  For my own part, I should select a middle course, and say that Mrs. J.E.  BUCKROSE has had a wholly admirable idea for a short story, which she has done her best to spoil by enlarging it to book dimensions, and a little over-sweetening it.  There is real delicacy and beauty in her theme.  The youth forced by partial blindness to give up all the hopes for which he had been educated, who becomes a shepherd, solacing himself with his pipe (musical) and the simplicities of country lore for the loss of love and ambition; and eventually, after his death, is deified by rustic tradition into a supernatural helper of “all things that are kind”—­here is an idea for the tenderest handling.  My feeling is, while giving Mrs. BUCKROSE every credit for such an inspiration, that she should have been a little sterner with herself over the treatment, and thus avoided a certain stickiness that may irritate those who prefer the simplicity of nature to a not quite sufficiently concealed art.  But, as I began by saying, it all depends on the individual palate; and, anyhow, the book has the historic excuse of being a very little one, which you can read, with pleasure or irritation, within the hour.

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If you should chance to hanker for a change from novels in which the hero and heroine dally over-long in falling in love you will get it by reading The Fur-Bringers (HODDER AND STOUGHTON).  No time is wasted upon preliminaries, not a minute; and as soon as Ambrose Deane and Colina Gaviller have met and discovered at sight that they are just made for each other the really exciting part of the story begins.  I forget how many times Ambrose is arrested during the course of the tale, but I do know that things keep on happening all the time, and that the rescue of the hero by the Indian girl Nesis is delightfully told.  Altogether Mr. HULBERT FOOTNER’S picture of the life of a trader in Athabasca is particularly attractive.  I like it all, including the cover.